Police gets tough on ranks with tinted vehicles

Apr 03, 2019 News

Tinted vehicles are a contributor to many crimes

Those police ranks who are in the habit of driving overly tinted vehicles will face the heat. This trend of driving vehicles with tinted windows is viewed as a direct violation of the laws that govern tinted vehicles.
It is also a slap in the face of the Guyana Police Service which sees this issue as a significant contributor to criminal offences.
Some choose to tint their personal vehicle to the point of where it is impossible to view the inside of the vehicle.
‘D’ Division Commander Edmond Cooper yesterday, said that his division will impose severe penalties on any police officers found driving tinted vehicles that do not allow a clear view of their interior.
The Commander has staged several campaigns in the West Demerara District and many vehicles have been stripped of the tint. However one will still notice some amount of tinted vehicles traversing the ‘Westside’, and this may very well be because of the irresponsible attitude of some traffic ranks placed on the roads to enforce the law.
Police officers who deliberately fail to apprehend their friends and associates driving tinted vehicles will also face the full force of the law.
Enforcing the law against tinted vehicles may have very well been tarnished in some areas around Guyana, by lackadaisical police officers who fail to enforce the law in cases when their friends or relatives are found with tinted vehicles.
Just yesterday around 13:00 hrs a reporter was actually sitting in a taxi from the Phoenix Taxi Service (West Bank Demerara) with all the back windows tinted to the point of not allowing an inside view. As the taxi approached the Demerara Harbour Bridge (en route to Georgetown), two uniformed ranks stopped the car, asked the driver to roll down his very tinted back windows and then with a smile told him to roll on.
When asked why he was not pulled over for his very tinted windows, the driver laughed and retorted, “Me an dem man good…Like how dem see me passing he suh steady, dem gon tackle me fuh ah raise on meh way back… Bai dem man does flex. All yuh got fuh do is pass ah money.”
The driver went on to inform that tinted vehicles pass everyday right under the noses of traffic ranks placed to work at the Demerara Harbour Bridge intersection.
Not so long ago Police Traffic Chief, Dion Moore, said that the Traffic Department had extended the ‘tint campaign’ to include other ranks of the force. He had also informed that in this exercise police officers were not excluded.
Previously, Government had moved ahead to address the issue of tints on vehicles. The findings coming out of the reports provided were that while for some, tints serve as protection against the sun, for others, it has been used to conduct illegal activities, including robberies.
For the darker tints, the Ministry of Public Security has to grant permission.
However Commander Edmond Cooper yesterday noted that several businessmen are abusing this Government grant to the extremes.
In the application for a Tint Waiver, vehicle owners must submit a copy of the Certificate of Vehicle Registration and the Certificate of Fitness and a copy of the last tint permit received (if applicable).
The process from application to final approval or rejection for a tint waiver is that upon receipt of the application, along with documents required, the applicant will be served with a letter that must be taken to the Licence Revenue Office (LRO) in order to verify the Vehicle’s Tint Density.
Subsequent to the completion of this verification process, the LRO will submit its tint reading to the Minister of Public Security for approval/refusal. The Ministry will notify the applicant of the final decision, and if the application is approved, the applicant will be granted a Tint Waiver Permit.
The permits are valid for one year and should be renewed at least one week before the expiry date. Only vehicles with a manufacturer’s tint will be eligible to be considered for a tint waiver.
In the past, there have been widespread complaints about the manner in which tint waivers were being approved. There were also questions about the private vehicles of police ranks, who are accused of sporting the darkest of tints.

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